Jury Deliberating In Bryant Smith's Murder Trial

November 09, 2011|By DAVID OWENS, dowens@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

HARTFORD — — A jury of nine women and three men will be back in Superior Court on Thursday morning to deliberate the fate of Bryant Smith, a Hartford man accused of shooting and killing his brother in his mother's Cowles Street apartment in April 2009.

In closing arguments Wednesday, prosecutor Anne Mahoney urged jurors to convict Smith of murder and other charges. She argued that Smith intentionally shot his brother Patrick Smith twice in the head and once in the chest because he suspected him of "snitching" on another brother, causing him to go to jail, and because he did not send money to his brother's commissary account in prison.

That was the explanation Bryant Smith offered to two Hartford police detectives early on April 9, 2009, hours after he is accused of killing his brother, Mahoney said.

Public defender Robert Meredith urged jurors to consider Bryant Smith's conduct in light of his heavy use of the illegal drug PCP. Meredith argued that Smith was in the midst of PCP-induced psychosis when he killed his brother and confessed to police.

Smith's actions before and after the killing — he was described by trial witnesses as being erratic, aggressive, paranoid, and making no sense when he talked — are indicative of Smith's not being in touch with reality, Meredith argued.

"He was out of his mind," Meredith told jurors.

And for that reason, Smith "did not make a conscious decision to kill his brother," Meredith said. "Why? He was somewhere else. He was out of his mind."

Mahoney dismissed the defense claims as well as the testimony of mental health workers. She asked jurors to consider the lack of physical evidence that Smith was on PCP. No scientific tests were submitted to show Smith had PCP in his system, she argued.

Mahoney told jurors that the only issue they should have reasonable doubt about was whether Smith was on PCP.

She argued that Smith's acts the night of the killing at 71-73 Cowles St. had explanations other than PCP. Smith jumped from the apartment's second-floor window after his brother was stabbed, she said, because he wanted to escape Hartford police who were at the front and back doors of the apartment, not because of PCP.

Smith continued to bad-mouth his brother at police headquarters, Mahoney argued, because he believed Patrick had snitched on another brother.

And she pointed to the testimony of Hartford police Sgt. Paul Varkal, who testified that he heard Smith say to his mother, "Mom, I [messed] up."

Meredith argued that only Varkal heard that statement while other police officers testified that Bryant Smith was ranting and raving and making no sense.

Mahoney suggested to jurors that the defense's explanation of PCP intoxication was an effort to "admit" the crime, but "avoid" punishment.